Bull Forte Society
(After pictures by Terry
Clarke)
It's like it always
rains, a depression from the North,
when every colour
blends to beige, to brown.
It's like it's always
cold, when blues submerge the warmth,
when every handshake
waits for a return.
And we see them seeping
in
last dregs of human
form,
ordered queues of strip
and search
and shower.
We pump them full of
Naloxone, promises and triggers
while they pick and
fidget, waiting out each hour.
And when they can
convince us they're like new
And when we can
convince them there's support
We swill them out, like
leaves from a cup,
let their future play
from where they fall.
Winos on Ainslee Street Rec
(After pictures by Paul Galyer)
Among the debris strewn about this scene
I find the detail only if I look
a button lost in temper lays untouched
warmed by broken glass of brown and green
down within the litter and the muck.
The charred remains of something paper-based:
a letter of repentance to a mum
who spoiled and slapped her one remaining son
until he left, part honoured, part disgraced,
and still he leaves all he does part-done.
A rusted key left swimming between stone
misshapen from the times the lock was tried
when all I ever did was sit and cry
ready then to talk, to stop, atone
ready now to drink away the why.
A fifty-bit was spotted here today
its ownership contested in a spat
the outcome was a heads or tails comeback
from the member least in disarray
though I guess you'd have to look among the pack.
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